5 computer security facts that surprise most people

Every company is completely and utterly owned by a nefarious hacker or easily could be. That’s just a fact. I’m not including top secret military installations that don’t have Internet and require that their hard drives be placed in a locked safe at the end of every day. I’m talking about the average corporate company or small business.

I’ve never consulted at a company (and I’ve consulted at hundreds) where I didn’t find at least one hacker hidden somewhere when asked to do so. In most cases, especially over the last decade, I found multiple groups that had been in for years. My personal record was eight different hacking groups, with some in as long as ten years.

That one was interesting because one of the reasons they called me was that a software patch that they didn’t want applied was applying no matter what they did. The hacker groups were tired of waiting for the victim company to make its environment more secure, because more and more hacking groups kept breaking in. It’s a problem when the hackers are more security conscious than you are.